


Breathe Me

by bodysnatch3r



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-27
Updated: 2013-01-27
Packaged: 2017-11-27 04:28:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/658013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bodysnatch3r/pseuds/bodysnatch3r
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They are tied with blood and pain and loss, and smiles shared despite the emptiness, promises never broken.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breathe Me

**Author's Note:**

> just a quick thing for eventual reference, i'm rolling with the headcanon that peter jackson kept azog in the story so he could throw him into the battle of five armies. enjoy!  
> (also this is all ashke and vita and lucy's fault if you are reading this you are poofaces ABSOLUTE POOFACES why do you make me write horrible things _why_ )

> _drag my teeth  
> _ _across your chest  
> _ _and taste your beating heart_

**i** _  
_

The dragon comes. His prince's heart shatters.

 

**ii**

He counts his breaths and he counts his blessings, clouds of vapor swirling against merciless moonlight. But as soon Thorin tries to breathe, _properly_ , let oxygen fill his lungs to the rim and swallow, he realizes he _can't_.

There's darkness tying a noose with able fingers around his jugular, and he sighs and runs grimy hands through sweat-matted hair and glances at his sleeping siblings, wrapped in a cover next to crackling campfire, and at his people amongst them, and at his father and grandfather.

They are shadows now, remnants of something gold, glittering and ancient. Something lost in a handful of ash.

He tries to breathe and can't and it is  _maddening_ , so he throws his head back and gasps, deep ragged breaths that hit the sternum and cannot possibly go on, and he wishes they would, but his bones are calcified in pain and even moving is proving to be difficult.

Breathing is a battle he cannot win right now and it becomes painful and clear a bit too fast, and for a second there's the ring of pain forced into his ears, and a dragon's greed-filled madness.

"You should rest."

He is dragged back to the surface by a hand placed to the back of his neck, fingers knotting themselves in his hair, for a moment, and the prince closes his eyes and leans into the touch, but it's not enough, and his heartbeat still doesn't feel right (it never will).

"I must keep watch."

"You'd do us no good a broken exhausted mess, _my prin_ -"

"Do _not_ ," and he pulls himself away from the touch, a mere inch, but enough, and regrets it immediately, "not now. This is not the time nor place for pleasantries."

The one behind him stands there, still, for a moment, and Thorin almost fears he'll leave, and, right now, he realizes it's something he couldn't easily handle. But Dwalin (for to whomelse could a hand so tentatively placed as if in constant fear to break the things it touches belong to?) doesn't walk away. He never could: instead he sits next to Thorin, and smiles at him. It hits Thorin like a blow to the back and a stab to the throat, tired eyes curling into a painful little smile and meeting his, and he wants to disappear because Dwalin is smiling for  _him_ and no one else although he has just watched his world crumble, reduced to nothing but ash and dirt and dragon's breath and for some unfathomable, incomprehensible reason, Thorin feels guilty for his people's plight, for this diaspora they have been forced into by red, shining scales ( _and your own line's filthy greed_ , a tiny voice whispers, but it means nothing) and before he knows it, he feels the words curl in his dirt-filled throat.

"I'm sorry."

"You have no fault," is hushed and precise and Dwalin says it without looking him in the eye. "None at all."

Thorin scoffs, and neither of them mention the screams or the pain or the fire, the crash of wood torn from wood, of bones crunched and charred. It's etched into their retinas with such a precision that they could _paint it_ , given them the chance, and every detail would be exactly how it was, down to the rocks tumbling, down to the blood staining the halls.

"Do you think we'll ever see Erebor again, Dwalin?"

The warrior is silent for a very, very long time, and he lights his pipe- embers shining red in the darkness of cold and quietness, lets smoke swirl and fill his nostrils not so much for the desire to actually smoke as for the need to fill the empty space between his eyes.

He doesn't want to _lie_ (he doesn't know what the future holds, how could he _ever_?), for it is treason to lie to your prince.

But he does it anyway despite the emptiness.

" _Yes_."

Thorin sighs, and swallows, and air claws at his sinuses. He thinks he can see smoke bleeding the redness of burning fire billowing at the horizon, but he tells himself he's tricked his eyes to see things that are't there because the sight of smoke would just hurt everything a million times more, so he simply cracks his knuckles and pulls his furs tighther over his shoulders and shuts his eyes and swallows down the sound of Dwalin's voice along with everything else that hurts. 

Until Dwalin leans against him, ever so slightly, and Thorin feels his lips brush against his cheek the same way they have countless times before (a hand squeezing a bit too long during training, a smile that's just an inch too wide, a sigh just a breath too close to your collarbones). They linger there, and that's what shatters the shell.

The prince lets himself break, but he doesn't cry. There will be time for tears.

 

**iii**

It's through sweat and blood that Thorin chokes on his own soul in the shape of a memory of his grandfather's head raised high above the painful fighting masses, and that's when he hears himself scream, so painfully familiar, and when he feels his body move and crash through bodies, through fighting friends and dying comrades.

Through the madness of elves and orcs and men, and wounds and his own guilt, until his sword clashes with Azog's for the third and final time, and Thorin realizes he has no air left in his lungs to scream.

He can only fight until he's drenched in blood, until his heartbeat is so deafening he thinks he might suffocate from the very sound thundering through him that makes him blink away the tears and hide them down inside, the deepest possible. Until he feels his kneecaps snap as a blow hits him there, and the next thing he knows he coughs blood, and the next thing he knows his eyes are rolling back in his skull, and he is blinded by pain.

Throbbing, black, vicious pain, pain that drowns out everything else that isn't blade dragged down his back, that isn't voices yelling his name over and over, and then he can't even hear them (whoever they are) either, because he's screaming too loud, shaking curled up on his hands and knees crawling through mud like a wounded dog, and all he can feel is Erebor moaning around him, rock mercilessly closing in, his mind telling him the floor is ash and bones and his ancestor's shame at his failure.

And then he lets himself fall on his back and sink away, and sees what he had prayed, night after night, to never be forced to see: blond and dark, green eye and black, and teeth bared in a snarl, a bow and twin sister swords, the howl of two boys forced to faced the unimaginable, and then even that becomes muffled, even that becomes clouded.

He sees bones shattering and older brothers holding the youngest ones, bloody hair wiped out of faces. 

And it's _then_ that he truly feels the cold fill his eyes, it's then that he lets himself stare at the scream of eternity above him, and wonders if Mahal is watching, if Mahal is laughing at the pain of his people, tiny chessboard pieces to tinker with and burn. A child's delighted shriek once the ants start to crumple, aflame, if the match is held too close.

He wonders if that's what they are. If they are nothing but insects.

He wonders it when he feels strong hands reach him and grab hold of him, and the light is so far from his eyes he can't even tell who it is until he whispers his name, and then his Dwalin, his best friend, his brother in arms, is the only real thing left in the nothing. And before he knows it, he feels the words curl in his blood-filled throat.

"I'm _sorry_."

"You have failed no one," Dwalin hisses and grabs a fistful of Thorin's hair.

Brings their lips together for less than a heartbeat.

Their foreheads together for all of time and something more.

" _You have failed no one_."

But Thorin smiles small and runs a blood and dirt caked finger along Dwalin's lips, and to Dwalin it feels the world must end a thousand times, in ash and smoke and emptiness, before his broken king whispers:

" _But I've failed you_."

 

**iv**

He leaves after they are buried, gone deep within the mountain.

Disappears.


End file.
